Maidana-Guerrero: A lot riding on this fight

By Sean McDaniel: There is a lot more riding on the August 27th fight between Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) and Robert Guerrero (29-1-1, 18 KO’s) than just the WBA light welterweight title. The winner of the Maidana vs. Guerrero fight could luck out and get a fight against the WBA World Super light welterweight champion Amir Khan.

At the very least, they could put Khan in an uncomfortable position where he’ll have to make an excuse for not taking on the Guerrero-Maidana winner, especially if the winner of this fight looks impressive. But barring Khan facing the winner, Maidana v. Guerrero is going to be an exciting fight and well worth watching. Maidana, 28, has been involved in four very exciting fights in the past two years against Victor Ortiz, Victor Cayo, Amir Khan and Erik Morales.

Some boxing fans think it’s because of Khan that the Maidana-Khan fight was so exciting, but if you look at Maidana’s fights before and since the Khan fight, it’s clear that Maidana is the main ingredient to making the Khan-Maidana bout the fight of the year. Maidana is a punching machine who never stops coming forward and who has excellent power. He’s not fast of hand or feet, but he makes up for it with his high work rate and his good chin.

Some boxers think that Maidana is a limited fighter because of his lack of speed, but what makes him so hard to beat is that he’s relentless. Guerrero is going to find that out and unless he’s got a good set of feet that enable him to run for 12 rounds, he’s going to find himself in a war of attrition similar to Guerrero’s fight against Orlando Salido in 2006. Guerrero recently beat Michael Katsidis by a 12 round decision last April.

That win has a lot of boxing fans thinking that Guerrero will dominate Maidana and win easily. However, beating Katsidis is one thing and trying to beat the bigger, stronger and arguably tougher Maidana is a whole different matter. Guerrero may find himself having flashbacks to his nightmarish loss to Salido.